Question for Gawdzilla

[Major Major]

This may be as good a place as any to ask.

Some recent interest has appeared in a book titled Operation SNOW: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor (2012). The author, John Koster, more usually writes on the American Old West (i.e., one of his other books is The Road to Wounded Knee).

I would be curious to learn what our Pearl Harbor expert thinks of it.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

This may be as good a place as any to ask.

Some recent interest has appeared in a book titled Operation SNOW: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor (2012). The author, John Koster, more usually writes on the American Old West (i.e., one of his other books is The Road to Wounded Knee).

I would be curious to learn what our Pearl Harbor expert thinks of it.

Never heard of it. Is there a capsule of the argument out there somewhere? It would be nice to see something new on the subject.

 

[Major Major]

Never heard of it. Is there a capsule of the argument out there somewhere? It would be nice to see something new on the subject.

Here's the booksellers' listings:

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Snow-Soviet-Triggered-Harbor/dp/1596983221

Barnes & Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/operation-snow-john-koster/1110914721


Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13587019-operation-snow

Essentially, Koster says that Harry Dexter White managed to shift foreign policy towards a hard line on Japan, thus provoking them to attack the U.S. instead of the Soviet Union.

 

[Craig B]

Never heard of it. Is there a capsule of the argument out there somewhere? It would be nice to see something new on the subject.

Look at http://nation.time.com/2012/12/07/pearl-harbor-2-0/ It's all about how cunning Commie agent Harry Dexter White manipulated the USA and the Japanese Empire at the behest of Stalin to relieve the USSR of the risk of Japanese invasion in 1941.

I have to say that Stalin seems to have been served superlatively well by his agents, who were possessed of quasi superhuman powers, according to some accounts. It's a mystery why the Soviet Union later conked out, almost without a whimper.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Look at http://nation.time.com/2012/12/07/pearl-harbor-2-0/ It's all about how cunning Commie agent Harry Dexter White manipulated the USA and the Japanese Empire at the behest of Stalin to relieve the USSR of the risk of Japanese invasion in 1941.

I have to say that Stalin seems to have been served superlatively well by his agents, who were possessed of quasi superhuman powers, according to some accounts. It's a mystery why the Soviet Union later conked out, almost without a whimper.

And yet he ignored Sorge's warnings about Barbarosa.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Essentially, Koster says that Harry Dexter White managed to shift foreign policy towards a hard line on Japan, thus provoking them to attack the U.S. instead of the Soviet Union.

I suspect some magic at work here.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Oh boy. The Amazon page is entertaining. I think I have some friends who want to see this.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Monocausality strikes again.

 

[ddt]

Look at http://nation.time.com/2012/12/07/pearl-harbor-2-0/ It's all about how cunning Commie agent Harry Dexter White manipulated the USA and the Japanese Empire at the behest of Stalin to relieve the USSR of the risk of Japanese invasion in 1941.

From that article:

The Russians, meanwhile, knew that they could not simultaneously repel an expected German invasion from the west and respond to the Japanese threat from the east. A series of skirmishes with the Japanese at Nomonhan in 1939 had revealed serious weaknesses in the Soviet military.

The Nomonhan incident is better known as the battles of Khalkhin Gol, where Zhukov creamed the Japanese army. If anything, it showed serious weaknesses in the Japanese military and was a major factor to dissuade Japan from further aggression against the Soviet Union.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

From that article:

The Nomonhan incident is better known as the battles of Khalkhin Gol, where Zhukov creamed the Japanese army. If anything, it showed serious weaknesses in the Japanese military and was a major factor to dissuade Japan from further aggression against the Soviet Union.

Very. Zhukov was brought west because a man of his skill level was needed where there was actual danger.

 

[Craig B]

From that article:

The Nomonhan incident is better known as the battles of Khalkhin Gol, where Zhukov creamed the Japanese army. If anything, it showed serious weaknesses in the Japanese military and was a major factor to dissuade Japan from further aggression against the Soviet Union.

I noticed that too. It really is very odd to suggest that these engagements revealed more failings in the Red Army than the Japanese Army.

 

[Craig B]

Oh boy. The Amazon page is entertaining. I think I have some friends who want to see this.

Can you share the funny bits with us?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Can you share the funny bits with us?

This review had me chortling:

he two one-star reviews look like what used to be called "disinformation." (The Soviets used to attempt to suppress the truth with irrelevant charges because they feared the facts.) The English-language quotes in this book are all identified in the text. They come from Harry Dexter White's own state papers or the transcript of his hearing before HUAC. White was obviously pulling strings to start a war between the United States and Japan to help the Soviet Union. When FDR almost brokered a deal for peace with Japan, White became hysterical. Read his letter in the text. The FBI identified Harry Dexter White as a Soviet agent and a traitor in 1950. That document is available on-line. The fact that both one-star reviewers see Stalin as having saved America, instead of the other way around, shows where their true loyalties are. The five-star and four-star reviews of the book are honest and reliable. PS -- the book is very readable and contains some unique photographs.

Infowars level: Expert.

 

[Major Major]

Oh boy. The Amazon page is entertaining. I think I have some friends who want to see this.

Monocausality strikes again.

I figured it was that bad.

It's well to remember that CTs develop over the years. Thus, biologists would respond to mentions of creationism by discussing George Macready Price, while creationists had developed (how I was tempted to say "evolved") a new generation of writers.

Or the way Shakespeare experts expound on the fallacies of Baconianism (thus Connie Wills's "Ado") while in the Other Writer field, the current hot candidate is the Earl of Oxford.

I've run across a bunch of new JFK assassination theories, all with evidence supposedly ignored until now, but that's for another thread.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You have to ignore so much to make a claim for a single cause of Pearl Harbor. I'd need the chronology of Mr. Snow's purported actions, but I'm already suspecting the events and his supposed effectuations probably don't match up and if they do there are other, larger, forces at work that make his contribution peripheral at best.

 

[catsmate]

There's a review here, though it's by Wes Vernon.

Monocausality strikes again.

This.

From that article:

The Nomonhan incident is better known as the battles of Khalkhin Gol, where Zhukov creamed the Japanese army. If anything, it showed serious weaknesses in the Japanese military and was a major factor to dissuade Japan from further aggression against the Soviet Union.

Well it did show deficiencies in Soviet doctrine, it also showed they could trounce the Japanese forces.

You have to ignore so much to make a claim for a single cause of Pearl Harbor. I'd need the chronology of Mr. Snow's purported actions, but I'm already suspecting the events and his supposed effectuations probably don't match up and if they do there are other, larger, forces at work that make his contribution peripheral at best.

Agreed.

 

[SpitfireIX]

I'd love to see the so-called evidence that FDR ever seriously considered allowing Japan a free hand in China.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd love to see the so-called evidence that FDR ever seriously considered allowing Japan a free hand in China.

The "Open Door Policy" was the keystone of our diplomacy in the region.

 

[I Ratant]

From that article:

The Nomonhan incident is better known as the battles of Khalkhin Gol, where Zhukov creamed the Japanese army. If anything, it showed serious weaknesses in the Japanese military and was a major factor to dissuade Japan from further aggression against the Soviet Union.

.
That's history.
It doesn't sell the book, so....

 

[Major Major]

.
That's history.
It doesn't sell the book, so....

One of the commenters on Amazon thought it was a novel. There aren't any footnotes, see.


And if you look at it, and look under "also reommended", you get recommended to Diana West's American Betrayal . . .